Meta announces termination of its DEI program | Real Time Headlines

Yuan The company told employees on Friday it plans to end a series of internal programs aimed at increasing the company’s hiring of diverse candidates, the latest major change ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of people, made the announcement during the company’s Workplace internal communications forum.

Among the changes, Meta is ending the company’s “diversity slate approach” that considered qualified candidates from underrepresented groups for its open positions. The company also ended its diversity supplier program and equity and inclusion training program. Gale also announced the dissolution of the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) team, saying that Maxine Williams, Meta’s chief diversity officer, will take on a new role focused on accessibility and engagement.

Several Meta employees responded to Gale’s post with comments critical of the new policy.

“If you don’t stick to your principles when things get hard, then they’re not values, they’re hobbies,” one employee wrote in a comment that was echoed by more than 600 colleagues.

The DEI policy change follows a series of sweeping policy reversals this month by the social media company. Last week, yuan replaced Global affairs chiefs Nick Clegg and Joel Kaplan are veterans of the company with longstanding ties to the Republican Party. On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced new speech policy That includes ending the company’s third-party fact-checking program.

Axios first Report DEI changes for social media companies. Meta was not immediately available for comment.

You can read the full text of Gale’s memo, obtained by CNBC, below:

Hello everyone,
I’d like to share some of the changes we’ve made to our recruiting, development, and procurement practices. Before going into details, some important background needs to be introduced:

The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. Recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court mark a shift in the way courts approach DEI. It reaffirms the long-standing principle that discrimination based on inherent characteristics should not be tolerated or promoted. The term “DEI” has also come under fire, in part because some people interpret it as a way to imply that certain groups receive preferential treatment over others.

At Meta, our principle is to serve everyone. This can be achieved through cognitively diverse teams that differ in knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. Such teams are better at innovating, solving complex problems and identifying new opportunities, ultimately helping us realize our ambition to build products that work for everyone. Most importantly, our belief that no one should be given or denied opportunity because of protective characteristics has not changed.

In light of the changing legal and policy environment, we are making the following changes:

• In terms of recruitment, we will continue to look for candidates from diverse backgrounds, but we will cease using a diversity approach. This practice has been subject to public debate and is currently being challenged. We believe there are other ways to build an industry-leading workforce and leverage teams of world-class people from all backgrounds to build products that work for everyone.

• We previously ended representation targets for women and minorities. Setting goals may give the impression that decisions are made based on race or gender. Although we have never done this, we would like to dispel this impression.

• We are eliminating our supplier diversity efforts within our broader supplier strategy. This work is focused on sourcing from diverse businesses; going forward, we will focus on supporting the small and medium-sized enterprises that provide a vital driver of our economy. Opportunities will continue to be available to all qualified suppliers, including those participating in supplier diversity programs.

• Instead of equity and inclusion training programs, we will develop programs that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices to reduce bias against all people, regardless of your background.

• We will no longer have a DEI-focused team. Maxine Williams takes on a new role at Meta focused on accessibility and engagement.

What remains the same are the principles we use to guide people in practice:

1. We serve everyone. We strive to make our products accessible, beneficial, and universally impactful for everyone.
2. We build the best teams with the most talented people. This means sourcing from a range of candidate pools but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, gender, etc.). We always evaluate people as individuals.
3. We promote consistency in hiring practices to ensure fairness and objectivity for all. We do not provide preferential treatment, additional opportunities, or unreasonable credit to anyone based on protected characteristics. Nor do we discount influence because of these characteristics.
4. We build connections and community. We support our employee community, the people who use our products and the people in our communities. Our Staff Community Groups (MRGs) continue to be open to everyone.

Meta is proud to serve billions of people every day. Importantly, our products are accessible to everyone and help drive economic growth and opportunity around the world. We continue to focus on serving everyone and building a versatile, industry-leading workforce across all walks of life.

watch: Former Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly says Meta is returning to its tradition of free speech